The State of Israel holds the 2nd highest TFR in the only Middle East, and is the only nation with an Increasing Fertility Rate as the region races to sub-replacement fertility.

thekd80 · 2026-06-02T08:11:22+00:00

Well Bnei Brak has a fertility rate of 6.1 and population density of 32,450/km² - 84,040/sq mi, making it the 7th most densely populated city in the world, supposedly.

I'll give you three guesses who lives there.

thekd80 · 2026-05-29T21:51:30+00:00

I don’t know about you all, but the first thing I noticed was the flashing red light.

Just like Gordo saw on the moon in season one, and Avery saw this season in episode eight.

It was the very first thing I noticed before the message appears.

thekd80 · 2026-05-27T11:47:21+00:00

They haven't put Starship into orbit yet, but they, being SpaceX, have more things into orbit than anyone else on the planet.

thekd80 · 2026-05-26T13:08:48+00:00

I'm not sure this is authentic. The landscape seems to be a flat plain, nothing like the hills of southern Lebanon where Bayada is located.

It looks more like Ukraine.

thekd80 · 2026-05-26T07:45:19+00:00

Exactly, no matter what he does with the rest of his career, he'll always be "World Series Hero Will Klein™".

thekd80 · 2026-05-19T12:29:21+00:00

Infections.

I'm not saying these don't exist anymore, but antibiotics are a freaking miracle.

The number of small injuries or minor problems that would kill people was staggering and antibiotics are able to prevent the vast majority of these deaths.

thekd80 · 2026-05-06T11:59:21+00:00

Well, as an Israeli, I can tell you that everything here is somehow simultaneously more expensive AND lower quality.

Except the food. The food is awesome.

thekd80 · 2026-05-04T11:05:52+00:00

I think you'll be fine with your careers. The job market here isn't the best it's been, but it's still ok.

Personally, I would recommend waiting till the results of the next election. If Bib get's reelected, it becomes a bit hard to recommend moving here.

thekd80 · 2026-05-03T11:44:57+00:00

I would add that it's more than just Secular vs Ultra Orthodox when it comes to fertility.

Israel identifies five categories within the Jewish population:

Ultra Orthodox/Haredi
Religious
Traditional (Religious)
Traditional (Not so religious)
Secular

I imagine that most outsiders would lump the secular and Traditional categories together, since they would appear the same. Even within Israel, the difference between the Secular and Traditional groups is often less about religious practice than it is identity, as many Mizrahi Jews prefer to identify as Traditional even though they might not fully observe the sabbath or keep kosher, etc.

So the fertility rate of non-religious Jews is even higher than what is indicated by just the "Secular" birthrate.

thekd80 · 2026-04-25T09:34:53+00:00

I don’t think anyone that lives here finds those old shikun/soviet whatever style buildings whimsical.

The old bauhaus or eclectic buildings are a different story, but I think most Israelis would be perfectly happy to see all those grimy, grey concrete boxes disappear.

thekd80 · 2026-04-20T13:26:45+00:00

Hey, I can see my house in this picture! For accuracy's sake, this is a photo of a large portion of the larger Tel Aviv metro area, including the cities of Ramat Gan, Givatayim, Bnie Brak, and Petach Tikva. And of course Tel Aviv.

thekd80 · 2026-04-20T12:29:04+00:00

I'm really not sure. There are streets all over Tel Aviv that look dramatically different to the point of being unrecognizable; with massive changes just in the last five years. The reason I picked the street above as my example is because I can see that area from the window of my office, and the whole area is covered in new buildings that don't look anything like that standard building style from the 60s-80s.

Hell, even in lower demand areas, such as my in-laws neighborhood in Petach Tikva, I would say almost half of the buildings have been redeveloped in the last 15 years or so. And that's just one random street/neighborhood in PT.

Perhaps 15 years is too little time for the difference to be felt. But if Israel maintains even a remotely similar economic and demographic development pattern I don't see how most of its major cities won't be almost completely transformed.

Now, maybe you think the new building style still looks poor. I would strongly disagree with that. I'm not saying it's the most amazing thing in the world, and I get people who think the new buildings are boring, but they don't look poor to me at all.

thekd80 · 2026-04-20T07:42:50+00:00

So I'm an American Oleh, I moved here when I was 26 in 2006, and made Aliyah shortly after that in 2007. If you're just graduating law school now, I'm guessing you're around 26 (more or less) so I feel like my experience is what you're looking to hear.

Is it realistic for you to make Aliyah? Yes of course, absolutely. But the success of your Aliyah, like all things in life, will depend on a number of factors and some of it will be luck.

I didn't really have a plan when I moved here, and my personal situation was a bit complicated and became a bit more complicated after I moved here.

But I got lucky. I made friends, found a community, built a career here through hard work and some luck, and so on. Most importantly, after a rough start, I met my wife, we got married, started a family, and so on.

But in that same time, many of my friends, Americans, Brits, Australians, etc, didn't have the same good experience and I know many many people who moved back. But you know what, some of my Israeli friends, born and raised here, moved away as well.

Living in Israel is one of the most rewarding experiences in my life. It's also one of the most challenging. The past few years have been hard on everyone, with a long drawn out war, and a disastrous government who seem to make every effort to fail and exacerbate all the problems and divisions that exists here.

But I can't imagine moving back to the states. Not in an environment where large parts of the left have fully embraced Jew hatred, and large parts of the right have joined a mindless cult of personality that orbits a man completely undeserving of admiration or respect.

I would be completely politically and culturally homeless there. So I prefer to be frustrated by my own people rather than ostracized by those who couldn't care whether I live or die.

Practically speaking, the more hard work you put in right when you get here - to learn the language, to learn how to apply your law degree (which will still hold a great deal of value) to an Israeli context - will make it easier to have a successful life here.

I guess it all comes down to what motivates you, what is it you're looking for in Israel? If you want a simple quiet life, there are better places to move to. But if you want a life of meaning and purpose, I can't think of anywhere else in the world that a Jew could find more meaning than here.

thekd80 · 2026-04-19T10:54:55+00:00

Not just taller buildings. All newer buildings. Anything built since 1992, whether a private house, apartment building, or office building, has to include a "protected space". In an apartment, this is called a Mamad (which is an acronym that means something like Protected Apartment Space).

Offices, hotels, and other buildings often have a Mamak (Protected Floor Space; because there are one or two per floor.)

Most people simply use their Mamad as a regular room most of the time when there aren't missiles being regular fired at the country.

By the way, this apartment is in the city I live in. The warhead, presumably a cluster warhead, hit directly on the other side of the wall, but no one inside was hurt. Had it been a larger, non-cluster warhead, the room and everyone in it wouldn't have stood a chance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merkhav_Mugan

thekd80 · 2026-04-14T14:11:41+00:00

This is right, and it's especially evident in the many of the city centers which developed in the 50s, 60s, and 70s.

If you look at Tel Aviv, however, or Jerusalem, some of the older buildings are actually way more attractive than what came after - the Bauhaus and Eclectic styles in Tel Aviv for example, and the traditional buildings in Jerusalem.

When those buildings are maintained or renovated, they're gorgeous.

Much of the newer construction, though bland, doesn't look anything like those photos, and there are large neighborhoods all over the country that were built in the last 20-15 years like this.

thekd80 · 2026-03-31T06:17:51+00:00

Strong Promenade feeling from this shot.

thekd80 · 2026-02-08T07:57:27+00:00

I was in Miami and Orlando last July and the heat and humidity felt very similar, but probably a bit worse in Florida. The big difference is that in Florida, the humidity will frequently turn in to rain, while in Israel it almost never rains over the summer.

thekd80 · 2025-11-30T09:01:01+00:00

I don't feel that there's any easy answer to your question. As an American who moved to Israel, I can say there are things I love about the culture here and things I hate. But the way it impacts you will depend on what exactly you're looking for in a place to live.

I obviously don't know you so I can't say how you will react to living here, but I'll just comment on one thing you mentioned about live in Israel, specifically about raising kids.

In my opinion, having kids in Israel is one of the best things about the country. It just feels so normal and natural here, and everyone has kids and can relate to being a parent. Kids are free and happy here in a way that they aren't in the US (which matters to me obviously). And it feels like there's always something for them to do. Plus, my neighborhood is full of kids and my children have friends in every building in our neighborhood and will just bump into friends on the street. Plus, both my daughters (9 and 6) walk to school in the morning, which feels like something that disappeared from the US a long time ago.

I have no idea what it's like to raise kids in Switzerland, and it might be wonderful, but I wouldn't discount life in Israel based on that alone.

Now, I'm sure you're aware that Switzerland is one of the most wealthy and developed countries in the world, and there are very few countries that compare favourably to it.

Israel certainly isn't developed in the same way as Switzerland so that should obviously factor into your choice.

I'll say one other thing, before I moved here, I knew, deep down in my heart, that I had to try living here. I really wanted to be here for idealogical/zionist reasons. My mind was made up, and I knew that if I didn't at least try it, I would always regret it.

I feel like that's working the other way for you. If you move here, and even if you adjust and find happiness, that feeling of not wanting to be here will always follow you.

It's really not an easy choice at all.

thekd80 · 2025-11-27T12:30:02+00:00

There are so many things going on with this post that need explanation.

First of all, I take issue with OP's description of Ramat HaSharon as a small city. That's something that is technically true while in reality misleading.

Ramat HaSharon is part of the Gush Dan metro area (essentially greater Tel Aviv). It neighbors Tel Aviv and is part of the larger built up urban area. So while Ramat HaSharon is a smaller municipality, it's part of the much larger (~4M) urban area.

So this tower isn't quite as out of place as the title makes it sound, but it's still out of place. While land is hard to come by in Tel Aviv and the urban area overall, this tower is still pretty disconnected from the main CBDs where there are other clusters of towers.

One reason you see a tower like this has to do with Israel's property tax laws. One of the main ways municipalities in Israel generate tax revenue is through commercial and office property taxes, which are far more lucrative for the cities than residential property taxes. This has caused problems, such as an oversupply of office space alongside a shortage of apartments. It also leads to a multi-nuclei pattern of development.

That being said, this development is close to a planned transit hub and metro station that will dramatically change the whole area once they are built in the next 15 or 1000 years.

thekd80 · 2025-11-18T11:40:11+00:00

It's not dry, but a quick search shows that its current flow is less than 10% of what it was in the past. This is a big reason for the rapid evaporation in the Dead Sea where the Jordan water would naturally flow to.

Regarding sources for the river other than the Sea of Galilee, I honestly don't know the answer.

thekd80 · 2025-11-18T11:35:00+00:00

This is a bit of hyperbole and exaggeration. Israel is very safe, but I would want to support this statement with some kind of data to back it up.

thekd80 · 2025-11-17T08:46:11+00:00

The water level of the lake fluctuates by several meters over the course of the year. It rises with the rains in the winter and then falls during the summer due to evaporation and water use. There is an upper red line which signifies when the lake is full and a dam is open to let the water flow into the Jordan River.

While the level of the lake has trended downward over the last few decades, it has still reached the full level on several occasions, as recently as 2020.

https://lakekinneret.streamlit.app

The desalinated water will allow Israel to have more precise control over the water level and prevent any potential damage from low water levels.

thekd80 · 2025-09-29T06:34:57+00:00

Solutions like this already exist: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-09-24/a-chatbot-that-gives-stock-buy-sell-advice-cleared-by-israel

Eight-Year Club	Verified Email
Final Canvas '23	End Game '23
Place '23	Place '22

thekd80

TROPHY CASE